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Message:: [QUOTE="Tejas, post: 7694564, member: 84905"]Nixon's gold shock of 1971 had nothing really to do with WW2. Also this was not about "returning" gold to Germany, France or Britain. Instead, during WW2 massive amounts of gold had shifted to the US, because US productive capacity was undamaged and the US sold its goods against gold. At the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, the US proposed to make the US-Dollar the global reserve currency, which in itself is a priviledge worth trillions (which is why the Brits were opposed). In return, the US government promised to back the dollar with gold at a fixed rate for countries prepared to peg their currencies to the dollar. In the 1960s, the US government over-issued dollars to finance the Vietnam-War and large social programms. When France in particular realised that, President Charles de Gaule demanded the conversion of its dollar reserves into gold. Nixon feared that all gold would leave the US and reneged on the promise. This was the end of the Bretton Woods Agreement and the beginning of our era of free-floating currencies with independent central banks.[/QUOTE]